Priest provides minimal support for his son!

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Priest and His Son Are Bound by Poverty

A Whittier pastor fends off a woman’s legal bid for more money to raise their sick child.

PORTLAND, Ore. — Single and unemployed, Stephanie Collopy asked a Portland judge this month to order her son’s father to increase her child support and to add their chronically ill boy to his health insurance plan.

Sitting on the witness stand in a white button-down shirt, gray slacks and blue blazer with a small gold cross on the lapel, Arturo Uribe — the 12-year-old boy’s father — had an unusual defense: He is a Roman Catholic priest.

latimes.com/news/printedition/la-me-oregon24jul24,1,2612529.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

I guess you can only sue for large sums of money if the children abused by priests are not their own!

Nohome
 
For those who can’t be bothered to apply for free registration:

Priest and His Son Are Bound by Poverty

A Whittier pastor fends off a woman’s legal bid for more money to raise their sick child.

By William Lobdell, Times Staff Writer

PORTLAND, Ore. — Single and unemployed, Stephanie Collopy asked a Portland judge this month to order her son’s father to increase her child support and to add their chronically ill boy to his health insurance plan.

Sitting on the witness stand in a white button-down shirt, gray slacks and blue blazer with a small gold cross on the lapel, Arturo Uribe — the 12-year-old boy’s father — had an unusual defense: He is a Roman Catholic priest.

Uribe, who was a seminarian when he fathered the boy during a consensual affair with Collopy, had taken a vow of poverty and therefore had no money to support his son, he told the court. Now pastor of the 4,000-family St. Mary of the Assumption Roman Catholic Church in Whittier, Uribe had never seen the boy, who was born in 1993.

And as for health insurance, Uribe said his plan — tailored for priests, nuns and brothers — didn’t provide for children.

Uribe’s legal argument worked.

Multnomah County Judge Keith Meisenheimer ruled that Uribe only had to continue his $323-a-month child support, paid by his religious order, the Redemptorists. And while the jurist instructed Uribe, 47, to formally ask his health plan carrier if an exception could be made for his son, the priest wasn’t ordered to provide insurance.

Like other women whose children were fathered by Catholic priests, Collopy, 38, could get only limited help from the legal system, which decides child support based on a parent’s income. Although dioceses and orders often have considerable wealth, most Catholic priests — especially those in religious orders — make little or no money. Their living expenses are paid for by the church.

Canon, or church, law didn’t help Collopy either. It is silent on financial support for children fathered by priests. Still, several Catholic scholars said religious orders, such as the Redemptorists, should be guided by higher standards when it comes to providing for children. The Redemptorists are an order of missionaries, priests and brothers whose “special mission,” according to its website, is “preaching the word of God to the poor.”

Father John J. Coughlin, a professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School and canon law expert, said it was “customary” for religious orders to provide financial support for the children of its members.

“Given the special needs” of Collopy’s child, who has chronic asthma and allergies, “it would seem that the Redemptorists have a moral obligation to contribute to the child’s support … in accord with the order’s ability to provide that financial support,” Coughlin said.

Officials with the Redemptorists’ Denver Province could not be reached for comment. Archdiocese of Los Angeles officials said they had not been informed by Uribe or his order about the priest’s child until recently. In April, Uribe announced that his order was transferring him to Chicago later this summer.

Parishioners at St. Mary also were never told that their pastor had a son.

“I’m very, very disappointed,” said Rene Desmedt of La Habra, when told about the priest’s secret child and the support dispute. Desmedt, 84, has served as an usher at St. Mary for 45 years. “I never expected that. When this becomes public, there’s going to be very many people really angry.”

Desmedt said the church collects $12,000 to $13,000 each week from parishioners and that it could support the priest’s child.

“St. Mary’s Church is a rich church, in my book,” Desmedt said. “We can afford it. Boy, that news is going to knock the heads off a lot of people.”

Uribe declined to be interviewed but issued a statement.

“Since [my son’s] birth I have taken my obligation of support for him seriously, although as in many such situations this has not been easy because of the strained relationship and lack of contact between the parents,” Uribe wrote.

No statistics exist on the number of U.S. Catholic priests with children or how those children are supported. But several national support groups provide legal advice and encouragement for women whose children were fathered by priests.
 
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buzzcut:
Uribe, who was a seminarian when he fathered the boy during a consensual affair with Collopy, had taken a vow of poverty and therefore had no money to support his son, he told the court.
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Can someone help me understand this? If he fathered a child WHILE HE WAS A SEMINARIAN, why was he allowed to become a priest?

Sometimes I swear that the RCC is its own worst enemy.

Nohome
 
The solution to this is to follow the biblical example and defrock this priest, kick his heinie out of the religious order, remove all legal protections, and make him get a job and do his duty toward this woman and his child. He should have never been ordained to begin with. But the bible is clear about the qualifications for Presbyters and this one ain’t got em.
 
It sounds like the priest is supporting his son.

Why doesn’t the woman get a job and pay her share towards supporting the child?
 
Oh but the story gets better…

*Parishioners at St. Mary also were never told that their pastor had a son.
"I’m very, very disappointed," said Rene Desmedt of La Habra, when told about the priest’s secret child and the support dispute. Desmedt, 84, has served as an usher at St. Mary for 45 years. “**I never expected that. When this becomes public, there’s going to be very many people really angry.”
**Desmedt said the church collects $12,000 to $13,000 each week from parishioners and that it could support the priest’s child.
“St. Mary’s Church is a rich church, in my book,” Desmedt said. “We can afford it. Boy, that news is going to knock the heads off a lot of people.”
*http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-oregon24jul24,1,4407033.story?coll=la-headlines-california
 
and it continues…

*In February 2004, Collopy mailed the Redemptorists a stack of documents, including a doctor’s letter listing the boy’s illnesses.

She provided the names and prices for 28 drugs her son had been prescribed over an 11-month period. She forwarded a therapist’s report that detailed the family’s hardships, living in a basement of a house in a working-class neighborhood in Portland and having to join a food-donation program to save money.

Collopy also handed over a report that showed she had missed 94 hours of work in 2003 to take care of her son, absences she believed cost her a receptionist job with the Port of Portland. *

*Two months later, Father Richard Thibodeau, then the provincial superior of the Redemptorists’ Denver Province, wrote back to Collopy and said “after a great deal of reflection” the Redemptorists would offer her a one-time payment of $3,876.

“I sincerely hope this generous amount helps you make the decisions … for [your son’s] well-being.”

Collopy thought the check might represent a settlement and so she returned it.

“This amount does not put any sort of dent into the ongoing expenses required to raise/support [my son],” she wrote.

Uribe, in a written statement to The Times, said, "The leadership of the order agreed to assume my obligations for child support. The order has continued to do so and has provided or offered more support than I have been [legally] obligated to pay….

“I will continue keeping my son and his mom in my prayers.”

Collopy said that any support she received had been under court order and that Uribe had never attempted to contact his son — even after the boy sent him an album filled with photographs of himself or tried to interview him for an elementary school journalism project after Pope John Paul II died.

“It is unclear to me just who Arturo is praying to on our behalf,” she said. “Certainly the God of my faith has no tolerance for a father shunning his own child.”

Catholic experts questioned the order’s decision to allow a man with a young child to join the order and take a vow of poverty that crippled his ability to provide financially for his son.

Fathers are not barred from the Catholic priesthood, but they are rarely ordained because, in theory, their worldly obligations must be taken care of before they give their lives to the church.

“Arturo and I together created the life of this person, and we have a 50-50 responsibility to raise him.”
*
latimes.com/news/printedition/la-me-oregon24jul24,1,2612529.story?page=3&track=mostemailedlink&coll=la-sunday-commentary
 
Chris Jacobsen:
It sounds like the priest is supporting his son.

Why doesn’t the woman get a job and pay her share towards supporting the child?
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Perhaps because caring for a sick child is a full-time job in itself?
“Her share” is the work she puts in right there at home.

EDIT: Noticing the posts above mine. More than her share, it looks like.
 
Chris Jacobsen:
It sounds like the priest is supporting his son. Why doesn’t the woman get a job and pay her share towards supporting the child?
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Here we go again blaming the victim, a common practice in the RCC since the sex scandal.

The priest is paying the small amount of money required of him by law, that by no means is supporting his son. How about visiting him, reading with him and being a positive role model? Fatherhood does not end at conception, ignoring this child is basically child abuse and once again it is being facilitated by the RCC.

Nohome
 
Chris Jacobsen:
It sounds like the priest is supporting his son.

Why doesn’t the woman get a job and pay her share towards supporting the child?
Click to expand...
You call paying that pittance supporting his son? What planet do you live on?
 
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Nohome:
Here we go again blaming the victim, a common practice in the RCC since the sex scandal.

The priest is paying the small amount of money required of him by law, that by no means is supporting his son. How about visiting him, reading with him and being a positive role model? Fatherhood does not end at conception, ignoring this child is basically child abuse and once again it is being facilitated by the RCC.

Nohome
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The clergy of the Church is too interested in living in palaces, eating nice dinners at Democratic party banquets, and wearing fine satin slippers to do anything about it. Its a sad day when one must say that I don’t really take any priest or Bishop’s word for anything. Fortunately, as an intelligent and educated person who can read, I can figure out on my own what Scripture and the many writings of the Tradition say. When your own teachers need to be catechized, what do you do?
 
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byzmelkite:
You call paying that pittance supporting his son? What planet do you live on?
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**LOL!! Hey she gets only about $50 less than what i get from my ex for child support…but then he (my ex) does pay for 1/2 of his tuition to school and he does spend time with him during the year. **
 
When I first saw this article …:eek: I didn’t know what to say.

But finding out that Uribe was ordained after the child was born, and that he has never seen the boy… not to mention that some blame her for getting pregnant as if she did it by herself!!!

**Let’s see… $80 per week he gives to his son. :tsktsk: **

**That’s just wrong, knowing that he Uribe eats well EVERY night, and has a rent free roof over his head… **

**Why, why, why would you ordain a priest who fathered a child and was not married to the Mother? **

That parish takes direction and advice from a man who has never seen his child, and only minimally supports him? What kind of example is that?
 
The mother could also take the child to live with his father. Then the religious order and the father would have to provide for the child. And they are much better equiped to take care of the child than the mother is.
 
This is a very complicated issue.

The want to know more facts because it seems there are many things in the story that just do not ring true.

If this man helped to concieve this child (trying to keep it clean here) while he was in the seminary and he is a member of a religious order then there is something very wrong here. In religious orders you do not get sent to the semianry until you are under vows. So if this part of the story is true, then he violated his vows.

We do not have the full story here, really we only have the mother’s side. While it seems bad I do not think we can truely judge things without knowing the whole story.

This reminds me of the axiom stated by Ambassador Kosh on Babylon 5 (yes I know my geekyness is showing).

The truth is a three edged sword, their truth, your truth, and the Truth.

The religious order has no legal responsibilities here, one might argue a moral one but that is debatable. The priest in question has no property or income. What would happen if he was not a religious order priest but a homeless man? As for helping to concieve this child, if he was not yet under vows when it occured then it is not for us to question the religious order and his being a priest in it. I am sure that was something that was worked out between them and is none of our concern.
 
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Nohome:
Can someone help me understand this? If he fathered a child WHILE HE WAS A SEMINARIAN, why was he allowed to become a priest?

Sometimes I swear that the RCC is its own worst enemy.

Nohome
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Oh please. What happened was horrible, but this is one case. And if you search back into the past 100 years, I bet you could not find a thousand of these cases.

Now, if you go to any major and large urban center, you’ll probably find a thousand cases similar to this. And you might get branded a racist for pointing this out because “personal responsibility” is an intolerant term in today’s politically correct world.

I can see Dan Rather coming back for one night to blast the Catholic Church. “Everyone remembers the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal. The Church has run into more problems and more scandals. Deadbeat priests are everywhere and millions of women and children are suffering because of the Catholic Church. CBS News…”
 
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Hildebrand:
Oh please. What happened was horrible, but this is one case. And if you search back into the past 100 years, I bet you could not find a thousand of these cases.
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Pardon me for expecting more from God’s “one true church”.

Nohome
 
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